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Homicides up 48 percent in Chatham

Mary Green got to spend 40 years with the man she loved. April Femanio had 10 months.

Green’s husband and Femanio’s boyfriend both were killed in 2011, a year in which Chatham County totaled 31 homicides.

After a record-low year, with 21 reported to metro police and none in the county's other municipalities, homicides are up 48 percent in Chatham County. On the first day of the new year, the Savannah Morning News takes a look at some of the stories and trends behind the numbers.

Mary Green

The separate slayings of John Green, a 78-year old great-grandfather, and Christopher Shuman, a 33-year-old insurance agent, shook Savannah. Both men were described as warm, unassuming, the last person you'd imagine meeting a violent end.

Green's fatal shooting, in front of the Chu's Market on the Corner of Waters and Park Avenues, was Savannah's first homicide of 2011. Rose Parmley, 61, was having her hair done that morning. She arrived back to her parents' Waters Avenue home, where she'd been staying while she helped care for them, to find detectives in the living room. Parmley doesn't think her mother understood when she told her John was murdered.

It wasn't until the next morning, when he didn't bring her coffee, that Mary Green realized her husband was gone.

“The doctor said she was grieving because she wouldn’t eat," Parmley said. "And there was times she’d just call out for him at night and in the morning. 'Where is he? He’s supposed to bring me my coffee.'

She was so used to him bringing her that coffee at 6 o’clock in the morning and them sitting in the room and talking.”

Mary Green kept a news clipping about her husband's death in her purse, bookmarking the end of his life and hers. It puzzled her children. She told them "that's the closest thing I have to him."

Mary Green died Aug. 1 at the age of 84. There wasn't any medical reason for her death, according to Parmley and other family members. She'd given up.

“She said, ‘I just want to go. I just want to stay here no more.' "

In November, Trevonte Edwards, 16 years old when he was arrested, was sentenced to life in prison for the murder and armed robbery of John Green.

Prosecutors said Trevonte shot the 78-year-old after he bought a loaf of bread and asked a cashier to break a $100 bill as Trevonte hovered nearby.

Parmley and her daughter, Yolanda Mendoza, say they feel sorry for Trevonte and asked his attorney if they could help get him a more lenient sentence. He’s just a child, they said.

“This young man’s life is gone,” Mendoza said.

2011 homicides

Of the 31 homicides reported in 2011, 26 were in Savannah, two were in unincorporated Chatham County, one was in Pooler, one was in Port Wentworth and one was in Thunderbolt.

Bloomingdale police are investigating the spring death of a woman after a domestic violence incident. Her husband remains in jail on an aggravated assault charge, Bloomingdale Police Chief Thomas Gossett said, and the case has been turned over to the district attorney's office.

The suburban Savannah homicides were those cities' first slayings in several years. Arrests have been made in all of the cases. Two of the slayings — the Sept. 16 shooting of 30-year-old Vernon Michael Rich Jr. in Thunderbolt and the July 23 stabbing death of 28-year-old Nancy Sanders in Port Wentworth — stemmed from domestic violence, police say.

None of the 28 homicides investigated by Savannah-Chatham police are believed to be domestic violence-related, according to Dean Fagerstrom, captain of the department's Criminal Investigations Division. Dejuana Cawley, a 34-year-old found dead in a house in the 300 block of 42nd Street Oct. 2, was the only female victim reported to the department this year. That case remains unsolved.

For the most part, robbery and drugs are driving the homicides reported to metro police, Fagerstrom said.

Eight of the 28 cases the department has investigated were robberies, Fagerstrom said, and one of those robbery cases was related to drugs. Five of the eight robbery-homicide victims knew their attackers, he said.

Fourteen of the 2011 cases were related to drugs, according to Fagerstrom, and 10 of those 14 victims are believed to have known their attackers.

Fagerstrom said homicides reported to metro police "continue to be robbery and drug-related crimes, most of them... You ripped me off. You stole my money."

Last year, metro police investigated 21 homicides — including the fatal shooting of Larry Wall Jr. by police, which was ruled a justifiable shooting. Department officials say it was the lowest number of homicides reported in 30 years.

"We're still doing good, even though we were up (from) last year, we're still having a good year, compared to previous years," Fagerstrom said.

In 2009, 30 homicides were reported to metro police.

No homicides were reported in any of Chatham County's other municipalities in 2010.

Community involvement

Savannah-Chatham police have made arrests in 12 of the 28 homicides that happened in 2011. They say two of the victims shot each other. The Dec. 29 shooting of William Clark, the 27-year old who allegedly robbed a Wendy's and was shot by restaurant manager Robert Dasher, 22, remains under investigation and may be ruled a justifiable shooting.

"I feel like we're close (to solving) a couple of cases, but that could change like that," Fagerstrom said and snapped his fingers.

Metro police have made arrests in 13 of the 20 homicides last year that weren’t justifiable.

The department is waiting on data from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s crime lab on several cases, including the infant found in a garbage truck in the 7200 block of Central Avenue Dec. 6. Investigators expect it will take four to six more weeks to get full results on the boy's autopsy, and he is not counted among 2011 homicides.

Neither is Chris Mooney, the 52-year-old car salesman who has been missing since June 2. Investigators aren't discussing details of the case but say they found blood-stained bedding stuffed in a garbage can behind his apartment at 230 1/2 East 52nd Street.

In all the open 2011 homicides, the biggest thing police are looking for right now is tips.

"We need the community's help to prevent crime," Fagerstrom said. "...They've got to come to court with us to put these people away."

April Femiano

Despite never getting the chance to marry Christopher Shuman, 27-year-old April Femiano seems every bit the widow.

She helped plan her boyfriend's funeral, packed up the Pooler home they'd decorated together when she couldn't afford the rent by herself, went though grief counseling, and adopted his boxer puppy, Archer.

Even though the couple only had been dating for 10 months, Shuman, 33, called Femiano "the one," his family says. Femiano got choked up when asked if she was ready to start dating again.

“I’m very much in love with him even still," she said. "It gets hard, and it gets lonely. But you know, I can't really bring myself to be with anybody right now."

Christopher Shuman's body was found on April 30, Femiano's birthday. Prosecutors say Pedro Walker, a 40-year-old who spent most of the past two decades behind bars and was released from prison on a theft charge Jan. 24, stabbed Shuman to death with an eight-and-a-half-inch kitchen knife the day before. His body was found behind 21 Newell St., where Walker lived with his uncle.

Shuman, an agent for United Insurance Co., had come to Newell Street to collect residents’ monthly premiums, which they often paid in cash. Prosecutors say robbery was the motive for the crime. Jury selection in Walker's murder trial is set to begin this week.

"I don’t hate him," Femiano said. "I don’t hate any person, but he deserves as much punishment as they can possibly give him. He should’ve never been on the street in the first place."